Pride.com: Incels, "Groypers," and Trans Identity
Contributions on "transmaxxing" and the link between fetishization and the far right
For Pride.com, I contributed to an article regarding the link between toxic online cultures — like the kinds you’d see mingling on 4chan — and trans issues.
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting, conservative pundits and politicians gleefully chased after a supposed connection between the death of the objectively racist and divisive podcaster and “gender ideology,” hallucinating some linkage between a trans-inclusive progressive worldview and a myopically obtuse definition of political violence.
Trans people were immediately scapegoated by MAGA, and propaganda was uncritically and embarrassingly repeated by Saide Gurman and James Fanelli, traffickers of political agitation at the Wall Street Journal — and their un-fact-checked article was repeated by other uncritical outlets and opportunists.
The connection between trans identity and the Kirk shooting is spurious, and even hypotheses about this connection are contradicted by discrepancies between an internally inconsistent probable cause affidavit versus the work of an actual journalist,
, in a September interview.Even if there is something trans in the orbit of the Kirk shooting, there is no evidence —given the available information about the alleged shooter’s background, politics, and internet communities — that there is any sort of link between the shooting and science-based, inclusive gender-affirming viewpoints. The closest correlation, rather, is between far-right, “very online” perspectives about gender transition, and these perspectives are not based on progressive ideals, but in manosphere and incel ideology — the “transmaxxing” mythology.
That being said transmaxxers aren’t in support of gender affirmation but rather “incels falsely believe that women have greater ‘market value’ than men, receive greater societal benefits, and that feminism allows women greater advantages,” Sipling explains (Pride.com, 2025)
And, because of these mistaken, grievance-based beliefs, some incels and incel-related folks believe that transitioning — and transmaxxing — is a “hack” for increasing their opportunities and attractiveness.
To reiterate, the current connection we have between the Kirk shooting and progressive and affirming trans ideology is non-existent. The far right — and folks who accept their talking points in an unexamined way — assume that progressives are responsible for all things trans; but, a seedier, darker version of transition exists in right-leaning, gamer-adjacent “groyper” culture.
Regardless of any connection (if any!) to the Kirk shooting, I think a conversation — as this Pride.com article introduces — regarding transmaxxing and “transmedicalism” within the far right is important, as political agitators may see Dark Web-adjacent movements that have something to do with gender transition, and assume leftist and progressive movements who are pro-gender equality are to blame for any antisocial or violent behavior these fringe groups carry out.
Read the article here: https://www.pride.com/culture/what-is-transmaxxing